The Cuban revolution revisited: Part II – Political economy

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Any Marxist account of the Cuban revolution has to be rooted in an analysis of Cuba’s political economy, to explain the relative weight of the contending classes and of the existing state, and to understand what drove millions of Cubans to support Batista’s overthrow.

Cuba was the last Spanish colony to gain independence. Unlike other Latin American states, whose creole landowners fought for independence, Cuba’s landowners were more reticent, fearing the kind of slave revolt that destroyed their counterparts in nearby Haiti. When finally the landowners fought the Spanish, between 1868 and 1878, they were decimated. (Robin Blackburn, ‘Prologue to the Cuban Revolution, New Left Review, October 1963 pp.54-55)

Cuba’s second war of independence (1895-98) ended with the US invasion. Farber describes Cuba’s status from the Platt Amendment in 1902 until its repeal in 1934 as “de facto if not fully de jure colonialism”, enforced by actual or threatened US military intervention. (2006 p.71)

Between 1900 and 1925, Cuba made its economic breakthrough to the capitalist mode of production, but in the form of “the integration of the Cuban economy into the US economy”, principally by means of the export of sugar. (Farber 2006 p.18) US capital owned a quarter of the cane-land and dominated other investments. This created a weak Cuban bourgeoisie with a weak bourgeois state dependent on the US. In the words of Robin Blackburn, the Cuban bourgeoisie was a “parasitic” class that “could not properly be described as a ‘national’ bourgeoisie” but rather better as a “lumpen-bourgeoisie”. (1963 p.61, p.63-64)

From 1934 to 1959 a “neo-colonial arrangement” prevailed, which “meant US political control became substantially more indirect, coming to depend to a considerable degree on Cuban politicians’ willingness to ingratiate themselves and anticipate the wishes of Washington and of US business interests rather than on day-to-day US interference in Cuban political decision-making.” (2006 pp.72-73)

However this economic development did create a relatively large and modern working class. According to the 1953 census, there were 327,000 workers employed in manufacturing, 395,000 in services, 232,000 in commerce, 104,000 in transport and 818,000 in agriculture. (Theodore Draper, Castroism: Theory and Practice, 1965 p.77)

Around 350,000 workers worked in the sugar industry by the late 1950s, representing around a quarter of the workforce. (Farber 2006 p.14, p.22)

Uneven development
Although Farber argues that Cuba’s sugar monoculture was “a form of seriously distorted economic development” and says, “the assumption of Cuban dependency theorists… that pre-revolutionary Cuba experienced only economic growth rather than economic development… is either tautological… or false.” (2006 p.18)

The evidence bares out Farber’s description of Cuba as a capitalist social formation that had undergone “uneven development”. In the late 1950s Cuba was the fourth richest country on Latin America, measured by income per head. It was also fourth by other indices, such the percentage of workers in industry, literacy, per capita electric power and calorific food consumption. It had a developed transport and communications network. (2006 p.7)

In standard of living indices in Latin America, Cuba was first for TVs, telephones, newspaper readership and cars per head; third for radio sets per head, medical doctors per head and average food consumption; and fourth for literacy (76%). (2006 p.19)

These figures serve to illustrate that in the 1950s Cuba was “far more urban, far less agrarian, far more middle class, far less backward” than Castro and his apologists later portrayed it. (Draper 1965 p.103)

Batista’s Bonapartist rule
This form of development also had consequences for the state. Cuba had a peculiar form of bourgeois rule between 1933 and 1959, described in more detail by Farber in his earlier book. Although the capitalist class ruled Cuba socially and economically, the Cuban capitalist class effectively ceded its political power to other forces in order preserve its hegemony. The Cuban government under Batista was form of Bonapartism, in which a class stalemate allowed a military despot to rule, preserving private property and serving capitalism, but with a certain independence from domestic social classes.

As Farber puts it: “While capitalism was the dominant economic system in pre-revolutionary Cuba, the native capitalist class often could not exercise direct political rule on behalf of its own interests, particularly after the frustrated 1933 revolution. The situation led to the rise of Bonapartist political leaderships such as that of Fulgencio Batista.” (2006 p.167)

The weakness of the Cuban bourgeoisie was indicated by its failure to create even a stable, two-party system to represent its interests in politics. The main Auténtico party was characterised by its venality and corruption – and no other force emerged to articulate the interests of Cuban business.

In these circumstances, the army became the central prop of bourgeois rule. However, the army too lacked social roots. Batista had deposed the old officer corps and the force that replaced it was little more than a mercenary force.

However Farber argues that because of its relationship with the US (particularly its reciprocal trade treaties), the Cuban government could not pursue the kind of nationalist, protectionist policies employed by other Latin American states to lift the economy from stagnation.

Batistia did introduce substantial state regulation of the sugar industry, with prices, total production, the distribution of production between mills and workers wages were determined by tripartite control by the state, owners and unions. (2006 p.24)

Unwilling to be ruled in the old way

Batista’s coup in 1952 coincided with a downturn in the world sugar price. His suppression of independent trade unionism and promotion of foreign investment led to some growth by the mid 1950s, but his reforms were unable to break out of the vicious circles of economic stagnation suffered by the economy since the mid-1920s.

Economic development in the decades before the revolution was very slow and marked by a declining sugar industry. For example only one of the 161 sugar mills inherited by the revolutionary regime was built between 1926 and 1959.

The standard of living figures mask significant economic inequalities, including differences between living standards in Havana compared to other cities, and between town and countryside.

And despite some economic improvements, the dictatorship’s repression generated opposition. The political, economic and social realities of Cuba made revolution a real possibility by the late 1950s.

As Farber concludes: “The Cuban economy’s problems had helped to create a widespread sense of popular dissatisfaction and frustration that made a large majority of the population potentially open to supporting radical solutions to Cuba’s problems.” (2006 p.34, p.167)

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